Global Alliance Africa Young Innovators Finalists 2023
Over a year on from the Young Innovators Award Ceremony, held on International Youth Day in August 2023, Innovate UK Global Alliance Africa team in partnership with FCDO, have been catching up with the three finalists to hear more about what they’ve been up to since taking part in the Nigeria Young Innovators Programme (YIP).
The 2023 Young Innovators Programme (YIP) was a new initiative launched as part of Innovate UK’s Global Alliance Africa project to provide training, mentorship and pitching opportunities to a cohort of ten young innovators based in Ekiti State with innovation awards disbursed to three finalists.
As well as contributing to the talent pipeline and ecosystem strengthening objectives of Innovate UK’s Place-Based Innovation, the programme was also designed to help combat the persistent challenge of “brain drain” to large urban centres that the Ekiti State government has put at the heart of its economic growth plans. Ekiti State’s Commissioner for Innovation, Science and Digital Economy, Seun Fakuade, recently championed the “tremendous success” of the 2023 Young Innovators programme by committing to a scaled up 2024 programme, with MISDE working in collaboration with Innovate UK.
YIP represents an opportunity for young innovators to secure non-dilutive seed funding – in the form of an innovation award – and expert training for their businesses. Youth led businesses are a critical part of any innovation ecosystem. Global Alliance Africa is very proud to have led this initiative in 2023 in partnership with MISDE, and we are excited to continue this impactful collaboration in the second interaction of the programme in 2024
– Jon Waboso Barrow, Regional Lead – Africa
Updates from the 2023 finalists
Spotlight 1: The Health City
The Health City provides an interactive, digital platform for young people to access sexual and reproductive health services and support including remote text-based consultations with a doctor.
Co-Founder and CEO, Dr Odunola Olabintan, describes how her business has developed from being “unstructured” to “thriving” as a result of the training and mentorship by offering her the chance to learn a “new and better way of doing things” from a business development perspective.
The Young Innovators [Programme] award was a good start up fund but we still need to push [for more funding] to get to where we want to be. The Young Innovators Programme is a programme that I would encourage any young innovator to be a part of… It has been a catalyst to get us to where we are now.
– JDr Odunola Olabintan, Co-Founder and CEO, The Health City
Spotlight 2: RISE
The Rice Inventory Storage Exchange (RISE) provides a digital solution for commodity storage, buying and selling for farmers and traders, which along with access to improved storage facilities, means that farmers are able to store their produce for longer and thus secure the better prices for their goods.
Adetunji Abayomi, Co-Founder of RISE, describes the Young Innovators programme as “fantastic” and credits the knowledge and skills acquired through the programme with helping him to transform “an idea [into] an accelerating start-up”. Abayomi highlights how the programme increased his understanding of the innovation ecosystem with the mentorship providing tailored one-to-one support from a successful innovator within the same sector.
My biggest achievement since taking part in the Young Innovators programme is forming partnerships with different stakeholders. Without the Young Innovators Programme, we wouldn’t have had this acceleration to the proof of concept phase that we’ve reached presently. We would probably still just be thinking: how do we do this? how do we do that?
– Adetunji Abayomi, Co-Founder, RISE
Spotlight 3: Motivar
Motivar is a digital platform that creates a community for young learners to access and complete digital education courses. For Mayowa Olajide Akinleye, Co-Founder of Motivar, the Young Innovators Programme helped him to take his “project with grassroots social impact” and transform it into a registered business that has invested resources into developing and launching a new digital education tool.
Akinleye emphasises how the training and mentoring has been just as important for him as the innovation award in getting to this point.
The training helped me rigorously sift through my thoughts and prioritise what was most important to building Motiva at this time.
– Mayowa Olajide Akinleye, Co-Founder, Motivar
The Young Innovators Programme has been a catalyst for the three finalists to arrive at longer-term objectives more quickly through a combination of training, mentoring and innovation awards.
Since taking part in the programme, all three finalists are actively pursuing further funding opportunities, with networking support from Innovate UK Business Connect proving an invaluable resource in helping these young innovators take the next steps towards growing their business and expanding into new markets.
The Young Innovators Programme is discovering existing talent, it is inspiring people to pursue an area of innovation that they can be successful at and it is [creating] a talent pipeline in Ekiti.
– Akin Oyebode, Honourable Commissioner for Finance and Economic Development
About Global Alliance Africa
Innovate UK Global Alliance Africa project is a six-year project funded by UK International Development through GCRF and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).
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Related programmes
Global Alliance Africa
This Innovate UK Global Alliance Africa 6-year (2019-2025) project funded by UK International Development aims to build new and stronger UK-African partnerships to maximise the creation of inclusive market access, funding and investment opportunities through innovation knowledge transfer between the UK, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa.
Young Innovators
The Young Innovators Awards are an annual competition from Innovate UK that finds, supports and celebrates young people with great business ideas.